Nachhaltiges Produzieren und Konsumieren
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The "fuzzy front end" of innovation is argued to be crucial for the success and sustainability impact of a final product. Indeed, it is a promising area of focus in efforts to achieve the United Nations' 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which provide a globally accepted framework for sustainability. However, the usability of the 17 goals and the large number of sub-goals represent barriers to innovation practitioners. Moreover, this early innovation stage proves to be a challenge for corporate practitioners and innovators, largely due to the concept's intangible, qualitative nature and the lack of data. To help overcome these barriers, this article proposes a four-stage approach for structuring the innovation process using an online tool called the "SDG-Check", which help assess an innovator's sustainability orientation in the early phases of product and service development. It is a semi-quantitative tool to gather and combine assessments by experts involved in innovation processes with implications for the United Nations' SDGs. Furthermore, this article presents our first experiences in applying the SDG-Check based on three living lab innovation cases. The results indicate that the tools can support and inspire a dialogue with internal and external stakeholders with regards to sustainability considerations in the early design stages of product and service development.
The development of this paper was inspired by the increase in the number of different eco-label like quality assurance schemes established in the European Union in the past few years. These schemes are flooding the market and the researchers raise the question, is there enough credibility in these schemes? This piece of research is based on 58 eco-labeling like food schemes and dissects them into the building blocks of the different factors that makes a scheme credible and analyses the structure of these blocks as well as a literature survey on the perceptions of both the consumers and producers to these schemes. The sort of credibility structure that the building blocks of the schemes (ownership, stakeholder dialogue, traceability, transparency, etc.) have created was discussed and it was questioned if they meet the expectations of the consumers. The main findings of the research indicate that although small groups of consumers may be satisfied with a number of the different schemes, the majority of them fall short of providing a credible quality assurance scheme. Improvements were suggested such as involving a more diverse range of stakeholders and expanding the responsibility of processors and retailers. An alternative to the current form of labeling is also discussed.
Die Ausarbeitung eines Konzepts für Nachhaltigkeitsbildung, welches das Ziel hat, nachhaltige Lebensstile zu befördern, muss zwei Barrieren überwinden können: die eine vom Nichtwissen zum Wissen, die andere vom Wissen zum Handeln. Sie zu überwinden, haben sich u. a. zwei Forschungsstränge zum Ziel gesetzt: Die pädagogische Kompetenzforschung, welche die für eine nachhaltige Denk- und Handlungsweise notwendigen Fähigkeiten aufdeckt, und die umweltpsychologische Theorieentwicklung, welche das Zusammenspiel von Umweltbewusstsein und andere auf das Umwelthandeln einwirkende Faktoren fokussiert. Die "Forschungsgruppe Nachhaltiges Produzieren und Konsumieren" des Wuppertal Instituts hat durch den Versuch, beide Stränge zu integrieren, ein eigenes Bildungs- und Kommunikationskonzept zur Förderung nachhaltiger Denk- und Handlungsweisen entwickelt und in die praktische Bildungsarbeit übersetzt. Die Theorie und Praxis dieses Bildungskonzepts sollen hier vorgestellt werden.
In this paper, we aim to present a comprehensive analysis on the emerging phenomenon of distributed innovation in commons-based peer production (CBPP) platforms. Starting with the exploration of the widely held belief on value-creation confined to industrial settings, we raise several questions regarding the feasibility of, and a need for, an inclusive innovation process that can tap grassroots capacity into both traditional (industrial research and development) and emerging (peer-to-peer) innovation models to yield sustainable solutions. In particular, we explore the emergence and structuration of digital innovations in the maker movement, as it presents an alternative construct of innovation wherein access to and sharing of knowledge is predominantly distributed. With innovation outcomes often freely revealed, its very structuration could pose a principal challenge to our conceptualizations of value creation and competitive advantage in the current economic model. Drawing from responses received from 200 collaborative innovation platforms, six semi‐structured interviews focusing on socio-technical innovation cases, as well as four in-depth narrative interviews with maker turned entrepreneurs, we present a detailed analysis on the topology of network, typology of actors, as well as the underlying innovation ecosystem in CBPP networks in Germany. In doing so, we contribute to the conceptualization of peer-to-peer distributed innovations in collaborative platforms.
The transformative research approach of Real-World Laboratories (RWL) has recently attracted attention in German sustainability science. Some definitions and understandings have been published, but guidelines and procedural quality criteria for establishing and running a RWL are still missing. To address this gap, this article has two aims. First, it aims to derive key components of RWLs from the current discourse on RWLs and similar, but more elaborated research approaches. Second, it aims to transfer these key components into a comprehensive research practice. This practice is illustrated by the RWL process in the project "Well-being Transformation Wuppertal" (WTW).
Methodologically, the article builds on a review of RWL-related approaches for collaborative, intervention-oriented research. This includes transition management, transdisciplinary process models and action research. Based on this review, eight key components for RWLs are proposed. They position RWLs as a normatively framed approach that aims to contribute to local action for sustainable development and the empowerment of change agents. The approach uses transdisciplinary methods of knowledge integration and engages in cyclical real-world interventions within certain spatial and content-related boundaries.
The components are transferred into a flowchart, detailing process steps, aims, responsibilities and overall principles for putting RWLs into practice. Thus, a hitherto missing tool for designing and running RWLs is provided. Then, the RWL in the district of Mirke, Wuppertal, is used as an empirical example to illustrate the application of the flowchart and related key components. Consecutive discussions centre on the different roles of researchers and practitioners in the research process, as well as the relevance of an underlying theory of change for effective interventions. Finally, critical reflection, application and amendment of the proposed flowchart are encouraged
There is urgent need to change the way we make use of non-renewable resources, especially metals, to sustain their availability for vital technologies associated with achieving change towards sustainability, but also to minimize negative impacts and to achieve a fair distribution of the wealth and burdens associated with their production and use. Especially public actors (state governments and administrations) have recently formulated strategies as a means to guide action fostering these goals. Yet, these strategies are very different in their character, which makes it difficult to compare them and learn how to best design strategies for a given context to contribute to the necessary change. To approach this question, we analyzed 37 national mineral resource-related strategy documents worldwide concerning their contextual conditions, motivation, and objectives. Following the general inputs for transition strategies (current and target state, transition strategy), we identified four clusters of strategy documents that share similarities in their approaches and support the development of specific recommendations for future strategy design in terms of both content and process. Designing strategies with a clear structure that interlinks a systems-based description of the current state, a clear vision (oriented at sustainability principles) and a sufficiently differentiated but at the same time flexible transition pathway improves their potential to contribute to more sustainable metal production and use.
The paper reviews the current knowledge on the use of biomass for non-food purposes, critically discusses its environmental sustainability implications, and describes the needs for further research, thus enabling a more balanced policy approach. The life-cylce wide impacts of the use of biomass for energy and material purposes derived from either direct crop harvest or residuals indicate that biomass based substitutes have a different, not always superior environmental performance than comparable fossil based products. Cascading use, i.e. when biomass is used for material products first and the energy content is recovered from the end-of-life products, tends to provide a higher environmental benefit than primary use as fuel. Due to limited global land resources, non-food biomass may only substitute for a certain share of non-renewables. If the demand for non-food biomass, especially fuel crops and its derivates, continues to grow this will inevitably lead to an expansion of global arable land at the expense of natural ecosystems such as savannas and tropical rain forests. Whereas the current aspirations and incentives to increase the use of non-food biomass are intended to counteract climate change and environmental degradation, they are thus bound to a high risk of problem shifting and may even lead to a global deterioration of the environment. Although the "balanced approach" of the European Union's biomass strategy may be deemed a good principle, the concrete targets and implementation measures in the Union and countries like Germany should be revisited. Likewise, countries like Brazil and Indonesia may revisit their strategies to use their natural resources for export or domestic purposes. Further research is needed to optimize the use of biomass within and between regions.